After a relatively long time with no posts here on the UU blog, we’re kicking back off our regular music-coverage with Tartarus. If you haven’t heard of these guys already go to the bottom of this post, as ever, and you’ll find links to things that might interest you. Tartarus hail from the United Arab Emirates, and that’s the first time we’ve heard of a BLack Metal band from UAE, Dubai to be specific. As you can imagine we were pretty interested as to what we were going to hear when we first uncovered them and started throwing on CDs, and it turned out better than we expected. Not that we really knew what to expect, but it wasn’t a bad surprise.
We picked up ‘Of Grimness and Atrocity’, the newely released debut EP, and intend to describe a little of what Dubai Black Metal sounds like to you.
So, to kick off we put on track 1, ‘Seshot’ with a little trepedation. It’s an atmospheric spoken intro, which leaves us pondering if the songs will be in Arabic or English, Arabic would surely be something to hear. Track 2, ‘Axes (Of Hatred)’, drops the atmospheric joking around and powers off with a perfectly precise cacophany, and intricate guitar-drum play. These drums keep catching our attention, reeling off unexpected doubles in the background adding a incredibly controlled aspect to the song. A minute in, and you can tell that none of the members of Tartarus are playing around playing, but this drummer (Obscurus) really has our attention. English, co-incidentally, is the language the vocalist (Zymolust) is spewing, and it sounds excellent. His voice is steady and powerful, they have an ear for harmony too, with a vocal dual followed swiftly by an aside for the guitar. To be honest this song hasn’t eased up the pace once and it’s impressive.
One can’t judge people, music, or anything else purely on where they hail from, but we embarrasingly admit that we are really amazed at Tartarus. We had no idea there was Black Metal originating from the Muslim world on a scale like this. We didn’t know the fight was being brought to UAE so well, although we’re super glad of it.
‘Cosmic Storms’ and the title track ‘Of Grimness and Atrocity’ round off the EP. Both are just as technically advanced and acomplished as their track 2 counterpart. Their technicality is merged together incredibly well, and you can tell by the unity all parts have in the songs, regardless of how the music is progressing or what level of chaos is occurring. It’s something to hear. I wish there were more bands of this calibre, to be honest.
One thing we regret is that it’s unlikely we’ll get to see Tartarus live anytime soon, as the band is listed as residing in Dubai, and that’s quite a while away from us. If any of you are in the area, don’t hesitate to hit them up.
So, as always, here’s some links to go and check out this band yourself:
http://www.tartarus.tk
http://www.facebook.com/tartarus.metal
http://www.reverbnation.com/tartarus
And as always, here’s some other links from us. Keep recommending bands for us, we’re getting quite a collection of new, local bands from all over the world, it’s excellent stuff and they’ll all be featured at some point.
http://www.facebook.com/ultimateululation
ultimateululation@gmail.com
Until Next Time,
UU
ultimateululation 